Tag Archives: garden art

I’m traveling west today, sitting too long among strangers after spending several lovely days with family and friends.

A couple of weekends ago, I got to see one of my dearest friends and two of her children, now grown into amazing young women. We met in Napa and spent a fun day together.

Worried I’d get slowed down in traffic, I wanted to arrive at our first destination early. I hit traffic (of course) but still arrived with time to wander the gardens at our first stop. I thought you might enjoy wandering along with me for a few moments.

Fall means racing season for my husband and me, and this past weekend we headed to Atlanta for a race near there. We arrived early enough on Friday that we had some free time in the afternoon, and so we headed over to the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

In previous trips, we had never carved out enough time to visit for long enough to justify the steep admission fee. I was thrilled to go, especially when I saw what was waiting for us there: a special exhibit of larger than life plant sculptures, called mosaiculture (combining the words mosaic + horticulture).

I have never seen anything like this before, but I love the idea of playing with plants to create mosaic patterns and larger-than-life pieces of art. This living art is the work of Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal, and the Atlanta exhibit is the first major one in the US.

If you live near Atlanta, I highly recommend getting to the botanical gardens before the exhibit closes on October 31. (And if you’re with the Atlanta Botanical Garden, isn’t there a way you could keep a few of the sculptures permanently?)

This trip was all about packing light, and so I only had my new cell phone with its improved camera on it. I was pleasantly surprised with the way the photos of the mosaiculture exhibit came out. I couldn’t wait to share them with you!

One of two giant butterflies at the garden, this was the first of the sculptures I saw.

At first, I thought this was a horse, but then I saw the unicorn’s horn.

What’s not to love about this shaggy dog?

A happy giant blackberry. I couldn’t get the light right for a good photo of his friends the strawberry and the blueberry.

One of many cute rabbits invading a garden

My favorite of the rabbits

This one is titled Earth Goddess. She’s 25 feet tall and weighs 29 tons! There’s a lot of steel and concrete underneath that natural facade.

To help you get an idea of her scale

These fish rotate together on an axis, and they are aptly named “Dancing fish.”

Hssss. One of two cobras facing each other as they tower over the garden visitors.

A detail from one of the cobra’s tails. Now you understand why it’s called mosaiculture, right?

The second cobra, with a side view of its hood

Ever since being terrified by the cobras in the animated Rikki-Tikki-Tavi that played on television once a year when I was a child, I have not loved cobras. But I actually think the cobras were my favorite of the sculptures. Which sculpture is your favorite?

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